ENGINEER–MBA romance : The True Story

Taking cue from the high decibel noise being generated about the MBA degree for engineers theories, i feel much like Gregory Roberts rightly put it- ‘Truth is a bully we all pretend to like’. We just can’t be in denial to the fact that there are lots of engineers who have feelings for the MBA degree. Well, 90% of the top B-schools entrants in our country are engineers for crying out loud! Being an ‘Engineer’ and a MBA aspirant I guess I could bring a bit of perspective to the Engineer-MBA romance. I would like to believe that it need not necessarily be “I know nuts about tech stuff and decided that the better things in life begin with an MBA.” Read on as I try to discern this relation and possibly dig deeper to justify this drama which lots of MBA aspirant engineers stage every year.

Understanding an Engineer:

Ok, now who wants to read something ironical? 2 years after successfully completing a B Tech course, I struggle for words to a potentially stumping question for many of my types – ‘Define: Engineer’. Whomp! It turns out engineer comes from the Latin root “Ingenium,” meaning “cleverness.” Ironically, a majority of the 50,000 (AICTE stat) engineers mass produced in India’s education mafia plantations don’t exactly qualify as “Clever” because for all you know, not even 18% of these people are “Employable.”

Fundamentally a good bachelor of the engineering discipline is expected to:

Plan, Design, Organise and Execute safe solutions to practical problems or improvement to the status quo using manpower, resources, time and money to the satisfaction of all parties involved.

– Industry Expectation 0f an Engineer

The above statement will qualify as the expectation from an engineer by any industry. But an engineer during the four years of his/her professional education is forcibly exposed to only the ‘Design’ factor in the above definition which primarily involves only applying mathematics, scientific knowledge and ingenuity considering technical constraints.

Cultural aspects of an engineer:

No one has mocked engineers better than Scott Adam’s Dilbert. Checkout the knack:

Dilbert opines that engineering is a domain for nerds and he enlists idiosyncrasy of style, hopelessness in dating and obsession with tools and tech products as their classic traits. Another difficulty engineers face with their profession is that average people in the typical run of life don’t have personal dealings with engineers, even though they benefit from their work everyday by contrast to a doctor, accountant and occasionally even a lawyer! Even if we take Dilbert’s theory with a pinch of salt the writing on the wall for a good engineer is the general lack of social skill.

Taking the other side of the coin, an engineer as person is taught to take a scientific approach (systematic knowledge-base capable of resulting in a correct prediction) to anything. Engineering is a science of possibility and imagination and pure science traces the theory behind the application. So fundamentally, an engineer is a person who has armed himself with inward thinking and the ability to ask questions towards a solution. Plus he is comfortable with numbers. He is a utility creator albeit working away from the actual user!

Understanding Management:

Ok, so let us start from the basics: What is management? One theory propagated by non-MBA aspirants is “The art of getting things by other intelligent people meanwhile enjoying a luxury coach ride of a lifetime.” Now, that is a load of crap fueled by hideous intransigence to understand before forming an opinion. May be it was only in 1908 that HBS offered the world’s first MBA program but this program was based on books like Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ which doled out military strategies and tactics in the 6th century BC. Another school of thought draws out striking similarities between what is taught in the Bhagavat Gita (Hindu book on way of life) and in B-schools! So where does that lead us to? Management is a science that has evolved over the years and it essentially deals with how to effectively handle life situations. Period!

An MBA always betters the skills and never changes the basic skill set which means a graduation is of paramount importance as your MBA builds on that. My $0.02 are that MBA education is the best add on to any graduation available to civilians today because a MBA is a general degree. It opens the opportunity to ‘manage’ oneself, a pre-requisite to attempting to manage others. It demonstrates a willingness and commitment to updating skills and professional development empowering people to tackle most worldly problems whether professional or personal.

So other than Dilbert’s salary theorem what could some good reasons to pursue a good management course? I’ve enlisted my reasons below:

1. Liking for Management as a science:
Now, those may seem like some fancy terms but science means a highly perfected technique. If you are really interested in the Micro and Macro aspects of a business then a MBA grooms you just for that. Even a bit of psychology if I may. The management disciplines like Finance, HR, Marketing, Systems, and Operations etc seem worth while knowing. At least the course seems very practical in the real world for me – It just sharpens your image of reality!

2. Updating your personal skill set:
To be very frank, life today is about managing your self well. One skill you could do with is networking which will help you gain perspective, enhance your emotional quotient and people skills like listening. Knowing quality people whether in your peer group, as good faculty or may be even people from the industry as mentors will in all likeliness keep you in good stead. Other skills like confidence, Street smartness, integrating skills and quick response to changing conditions might prove handy both in personal and professional life.

3. The Liquid-Oxygen effect:
Creating the right first impression opens a lot of doors in life much easier. An MBA from a top school is a cool jump in the socio-economic ladder. But more importantly it really helps to a have an awesome brand to flirt with so that you don’t feel sweat down your spine when a chance with a Venture Capitalist  is on (Talking entrepreneur wise).

4. Empowering to create wealth
This is the best part and personally speaking, the draw for me. An MBA gets a person to a position of power and is empowered to create more wealth rather than consume and give back to the society by creating a greater impact either as an entrepreneur or as a top executive.

Purpose of this short note is not to put a weight behind the “MBA” argument but to understand the benefit of attending a business school. Whatever the background an MBA grooms people to think creatively and improve oneself and it is not basically only about greedy guys making money hand over fist as per the popular perception.

So how does an Engineering degree help a Manager?

So why should engineers dominate so completely in an area which is designed to offer entry to any kind of graduate? Well prima facie it a may seem that the entrance tests favour engineers because of the math but that of course is a misnomer. What I understand is that engineers are trained to believe that every problem has a logical solution and scientifically approach all problems. They are in the habit of thinking inwards and reasoning in a more obvious way than other branches. So with one great skill already in hand, engineers may be a preferred set because of their way of thinking.
Becoming a manager is about adding the skill of thinking outwards, adding a bit of perspective about market place and polishing personal skills. It is like the ideal finishing school which completes the aforementioned weak links which a good engineer is naturally prone to so that he is ready to win the rat race.

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